Rhodes returned to the capsule hold and relayed the substance of General Brewster’s transmission to the rest of the battalion.
“Are you saying these jokers are really sending us back into battle against those things?” Dietz asked.
“They aren’t just sending us back into battle against those things,” Rhodes replied. “They’re sending us back into battle against those things without giving us the option to test the new modifications beforehand. We won’t know if it works until the Masks are already shooting at us.”
“I’m not going,” Thackery snapped. “I don’t care what they do to me. I’m not going to throw myself in front of those machines to get killed—or put the rest of you in danger by going into battle when I don’t even know if I can trust my own reactions. This is nuts!”
“You don’t have to go,” Rhodes decided. “You can stay behind.”
Her one good eye fell out of its socket. “Seriously? I don’t have to go? Yeah!”
“None of you has to go,” Rhodes replied. “I don’t blame you for staying behind. Just be aware that a sizable civilian population is in danger of these machines completely wiping them off the map. The Masks have already killed millions of people and they’ll keep doing it until someone stops them. That’s what Battalion 1 is for—not sitting on our thumbs behind closed doors. We have tools to fight these things that no one else has. I’m going in with any of you that want to come with me. We’ll make what modifications we can on the way. We need to be ready to rock as soon as we get there.”
His subordinates exchanged glances. “You make a convincing case, Captain,” Wild muttered.
“I understand that none of you wants to fight other SAMs,” Rhodes went on. “I don’t want to, either. That’s why we need to make these modifications to your programming—to make sure we all recognize our enemy.”
“And we won’t even have a chance to train with these modifications before we go into battle?” Henshaw asked. “That doesn’t sound like a very good idea.”
“It sounds like a disastrous idea,” Rhinehart interjected. “I mean, it sounds like an even more disastrous idea than the rest of this asinine project.”
Fisher chuckled. “That’s what I said.”
Rhodes turned to Dr. Osborne and Dr. Trudeau. They stood off to one side listening to the conversation—or the part of it they could hear.
“We’re ready,” Rhodes told them.
“You’ll all need to lock into your capsules,” Osborne replied. “We’ll make the modifications to your programming and it will take effect in all your SAMs at the same time. That will save us having to go through and reprogram each SAM individually.”
“I guess I can’t argue with that,” Lauer growled.
Rhodes turned away. It was up to him to set an example and lead the way.
He swung his legs up onto the mattress in his capsule and let the prongs lock into the back of his head and body.
“I sure hope this works,” Fisher murmured.
“You and me both, pal,” Rhodes replied. “We won’t be going anywhere near a battle if it doesn’t.”
“I’m beginning to share your paranoia of doctors, Captain,” Fisher half-whispered. “What if they make a mistake and completely wipe our consciousness? They could send us into battle without our knowledge.”
“Then we won’t have to think about this anymore. It might be easier that way.”
“Then we would both be technically dead,” Fisher pointed out. “Really dead.”
Rhodes didn’t answer. Fisher didn’t see the upside to that. Maybe he really was the saner person here. Rhodes wouldn’t argue the point.
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He woke up a few seconds later, but he felt like he’d gone through another conversion cycle—a long one.
The rest of the capsule covers in the hold were just starting to open, too.
Rhodes stayed lying down for a minute. Fisher’s face wavered there in front of Rhodes’s eyes. “How do you feel, pal?” Rhodes asked. “How did the modifications go?”
Fisher didn’t answer. He blinked at Rhodes in that rapid, birdlike way.
Rhodes tried again. “Fisher? Can you hear me?”
Fisher didn’t respond except to examine Rhodes with interest.
Rhodes’s heart sank. This was not good.
He dragged himself to his feet and tried to interface with the rest of the battalion. Lauer, Oakes, Henshaw, Dietz, and Thackery were already out of bed and moving around.
All the other SAMs activated, including Van even though Fuentes was still half-unconscious from his conversion cycle.
“Can any of you hear me?” Rhodes asked. “Fisher isn’t responding.”
The other SAMs turned around to look at him. He’d been interfacing with them for weeks—months, even. He knew them all intimately.
Their expressions changed as soon as they saw him. Wild narrowed his eyes at Rhodes and Fisher.
Fisher came to life in an instant. “Targets acquired on your right and left, Captain! The threat level is escalating!”
“Threat level!” Rhodes countered. “What are you talking about?”
Fisher changed The Grid in front of Rhodes’s eyes and overlaid targets on everyone in the battalion—and their SAMs. “Shoot, Captain! Neutralize the threats before they attack!”
Rhodes floundered to understand, and at that moment, an overwhelming, irrational desire seized him to raise his weapon and fire on the people around him.
“Stop, Fisher!” Rhodes roared. “Don’t do this! They aren’t our enemies! These are our friends!”
“They’re targeting you!” Fisher did something else to Rhodes’s Vipers. He felt two of them about to release without any control from him. “Shoot now before they hit you first!”
Rhodes fought to lower his arm, but he couldn’t stop the Vipers from arming. “Fisher—you have to stop this! Please trust me! These aren’t our enemies!”
The words barely got out of his mouth before Lauer and Oakes both brought their arms up to aim their weapons at the people surrounding them—including Rhodes.
Lauer pulled his head down between his shoulders and backed away. He jerked his arm back and forth covering the whole room.
All six SAMs yelled at once. Rhodes heard Van, Rocky, and Murphy yelling for Lauer, Oakes, Dietz, Henshaw, and Thackery to stand down.
Oakes eased off heading the other way. “Put your weapons down!” he bellowed. “Break off now and stop targeting me or I’ll have no choice but to shoot!”
“No one is targeting you!” Rhodes yelled back, but Oakes didn’t hear him. No one could hear anything with so many people yelling back and forth.
Henshaw raised her right arm and then slammed her left hand down on her own wrist to stop herself from lifting her weapons. Thackery started to raise her own arm.
She got it as high as her chest before grid lines appeared all over it. It morphed into an oversized Jackhammer unlike anything Rhodes had ever seen.
She passed the weapon across the room and stopped with it aiming at Rhinehart’s capsule. He still sat on the edge of it trying to understand what the hell was going on in the hold.
The weapon went off with an almighty boom. Thackery barely managed to turn it aside in time to avoid wiping him out.
The shot smashed into Rhodes’s empty capsule and all hell broke loose. Rhodes felt his Vipers about to release no matter how hard he tried to hold them back.
Some force beyond himself targeted Dietz and Fuentes who still lay asleep in their capsules, totally oblivious to everything going on.
The Grid in front of Rhodes’s eyes targeted Oakes and Lauer. Fisher kept yelling in Rhodes’s ear that they were about to shoot him and he had to take them out first to remove the threat.
He couldn’t stop what was about to happen. The Vipers fired their boosters to sail across the room and annihilate both men.
In his last act of desperation, Rhodes flung himself backward onto the floor, slammed down on top of the Viper ports, and the twin missiles fired into the walls instead.
They smashed out a bunch of power conduits connected to all the capsules in the room. Rhodes rolled onto his stomach fighting an irresistible urge to shoot someone else.
This feeling—it didn’t come from him. He understood that now. The Grid went haywire in front of his eyes.
It kept targeting one person after another and even the SAMs even though they didn’t exist anywhere outside The Grid. He would have been shooting at empty air if he tried to hit them.
Without warning, Dietz spun around and aimed his scourge gun at Fisher. The SAM hung right there in front of Rhodes’s face—right where the shot would hit Rhodes instead.
Dietz bared his teeth in a vicious snarl. “You bastard! I’ll kill you!”
His scourge gun charged to unload on Rhodes. The instant before Dietz opened fire, Henshaw hurtled across the room and tackled Dietz out of the way.
She threw her weight against his shoulder and his weapon swiveled a few inches to the right just as the gun went off.
The blast smashed past Rhodes’s face and shattered the floor where Rhodes lay on his stomach.
Henshaw stumbled over Dietz and he reacted in a mindless rage. He spun around, seized her by the throat, and roared in fury as he yanked her off her feet.
She started to struggle, but he overpowered her, slammed her down on the floor, jammed his scourge gun into her eye socket on the organic side of her face, and pulled the trigger.
End of Chapter 29.